Joe Francis' Girlfriend Reveals Anorexia Struggle

August 16, 2013

On the current season of VH1's Couples Therapy, Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis and his live-in girlfriend Abbey Wilson seek professional help to improve their tumultuous on-and-off relationship. On the sidelines of the show, ET's Brooke Anderson sat down with Abbey to discuss one of the issues discussed in the couples' therapy -- her longtime battle with eating disorders.

"I'm 25 now, and I started when I was 12 -- so it's been a 13-year battle so far," Abbey revealed of her struggles with anorexia and bulimia. She explained that she fell into her illness because there were several friends and family members around her as a child who with eating disorders and that over time she viewed the behavior as normal.

"I became very, very obsessed with working out. I had to work out every single day, sometimes two or three times a day," said Abbey, who at one point admits that she was only consuming 80 to a 100 calories a day for months at a time and shrank down to just 77 pounds.

"I would wake up in the morning and I would have a double espresso," she said. "Then I would take a banana and I would slice it into four quarters. And I would have one around 8 o'clock in the morning, or depending on when I woke up. Another around 12 or 1, and then around 5 or 6, and one before I went to bed."

Eventually she said the extreme weight loss took a dangerous toll and doctors told her she was at a huge risk for heart disease. "I was told that I was a walking heart attack," she said, adding that even that was not enough to get her to overcome her struggles. "I was just so depressed at the time, it really is a way of killing yourself slowly over time, and that was the way I chose to do it."

Watch the video for more of Abbey's interview, including her reasons for now going public with her life-threatening weight issues by appearing on Couples Therapy, which airs its season finale next Wednesday at 10 p.m. on VH1.